This is the store of “things”. You never know when you are going to have to make a rocket or volcano. Just one of those things that you do for your children.
Pricing Regime
The following pricing strategy seems ridiculous to me. Normally it’s “better value” to buy the larger pack of waffles. The waffles are cheaper individually at 14 4/9 pence per waffle compared to 14 4/5 pence per waffle although I would argue that this difference isn’t worth worrying about.
With this price reduction regime the smaller pack of waffles is much better “value”. The small waffles come in at 10p each and the larger pack of waffles requires 11 1/9 of your hard earned pennies per waffle. This, to me, just doesn’t make any sense as a pricing regime.
You possibly thought this website couldn’t get more mundane but I would like to think that I have stooped lower than before!
Air Force
Here’s an update on my Armada. January is complete, just imagine what it’ll look like at the end of the year!
American Sniper
I went to see this film last night. Here’s what I thought of it on IMDB:
I rated American Sniper (2014) 4/10 #IMDb http://t.co/1EDYTFJedX
— Ian Parish (@iparish) January 31, 2015
I think I’m possibly too old for these films. I just wasn’t impressed. It might be that I had already read some reviews and they weren’t very positive or it might be that I’m just a grumpy old lefty.
MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW
I grew up with war films. I thought they were exciting. I thought they generally made war look glamorous. The motives behind wars always seemed justifiable. Then I saw lots of Vietnam movies and you start to realise that war is used by governments to maintain their economic advantage over everyone else. I should probably write another communication about my views on war and killing people. So, back to this film.
A man, who loves his country so much, sees something bad and gets angry, he signs up to be a Navy Seal. He’s a good shot with a rifle. He trains to be a sniper and then gets sent off to war. Along the way he marries a woman. We’ve all seen Navy SEAL training videos, we know what they do and that they are tough. Nothing new there. The training part of the film completely missed all of the important aspects of training. It looked like a video game where the first 20 minutes teaches you how to play the game.
Being sent off to war and then being liberal with the truth means our man gets even more angry at everything and kills plenty of people fighting for their own country. He carries a bible all the time, because god obviously justifies all the killing. His tour fucks him up and when he returns home he’s not the man he used to be. He bears a grudge against a “baddie” sniper and keeps returning to Iraq in the hope of getting the baddie first. Our baddie has a wife and children but we aren’t allowed to know his reasons for being in this war especially as he’s not an Iraqi.
Sniper boy gets more and more disturbed but we aren’t really shown this. We get snap shots throughout the movie but no in depth analysis. We have an Iraqi tour followed by a bit of home life where he’s obviously troubled but it’s all superficial. Finally our boy kills their boy and he wants to come home, he’s done his job. Never mind the Americans that are still getting killed.
In the end our sniper does good and becomes himself again once he helps veterans. We see him talking to a shrink and after a couple of minutes he appears to be normal again. Bollocks. This film was entirely uncritical of any elements of war. It would have been far better had we seen more of the other characters and their fight with normality. also, this film has been compared to The Hurt Locker, which I also thought was shit.
This is essentially a cowboy movie for the modern MTV-editing age where we aren’t allowed to have feelings and thoughts and questions. Did I say, it was directed by a cowboy star? Some of Clint’s movies have been awesome and great. This one was shit.
Set Up
Here’s a look at my flight simulation set up. There’s a decent screen for the PC, the 10.1″ tablet which displays a moving map image and the HOTAS system for controlling the machine. I am going through the process of setting up the programmable functions of the stick so that flying is efficient.
What do I do? Hard to explain. Last night I went from Sint Maartin to Anguilla and landed successfully. My current favourite plane is the Dassault Rafale.
Amazing
Isn’t our planet amazing? It always manages to impress even when not doing much at all. This is the view of a rainbow over Maidstone, early 2015.
I don’t have anything else to say which given the context of recent Fooyah.net communications is a good thing.
Armada
This is my 800th communication on Fooyah.net. As I have been quite angry recently you should be pleased to know that I have taken up paper folding for some of the day to calm me.
This is my armada of planes so far this year. Thanks to Penguin for the gift. Only another 300 or so to go!
Sincerely Held Beliefs
This is a follow up to my previous communication. I think there’s more to say and yet I don’t want to add to that published communication. I am still on a rant though so feel free to skip to the album reviews if that’s what you prefer.
To draw a cartoon of Mohammed or any picture of him would be claimed to insult a deeply held belief that it is wrong to draw the prophet because it says so in a book. I am sure that this belief is “sincerely held”. I am sure that people have lots of beliefs that they consider to be deeply held and very important. However, just because your belief is deeply held it doesn’t mean I have to respect it.
If you have the beliefs then I can have my own. Maybe I’m a pastafarian, I have a holy book and a community that agrees with me. I can even claim they are deeply held and sincere beliefs. Once that happens you have your view and I have mine. Then we have a problem. Who is right? Who’s view is more important? They are both sincerely held beliefs with no ultimate authority.
Oh, sorry. We do have an ultimate authority. The law of this land. The law decides what is ok to do. The argument is made in front of the judiciary and then a decision is made. Part of living in this country is that I must accept what the law says. I might not agree with it, but I have to accept it. If I want to change it then I must petition government and the lawmakers. If I don’t like it enough then perhaps I would move to a country where I agree with their laws more. You are not at liberty to impose your views and ideals on me in this country.
I don’t care if you have a sincerely held belief. That shouldn’t get have anything to do with your actions or behaviour towards me or my society. If you want change then you do it through the correct methods.
48.8592°N, 2.3703°E
I am following the press and jumping to, quite sensible, conclusions about the motivations for the murder of 12 people in Paris. They were murdered because they did the job that is necessary in a free country.
It is currently believed that the 12 people were murdered in revenge for printing a cartoon depicting Mohammed a few years ago.
If you know me or read these communications you will understand that I don’t “get” religion. It is quite obviously a false representation of the universe. However, I do understand why people are religious. I get that. However, I am quite at liberty to think your beliefs are crazy. I am also at liberty to tell whomever I want that I think your beliefs are crazy. I don’t do this [too much] because for some reason it is considered bad to insult someone’s beliefs in a sky-fairy, zombie god child or burning bush. That, I also don’t understand. Why is it so taboo to say what I think about a virgin woman impregnated by god to have a son who he knows he will kill, oh, and then resurrect? Why can’t I even question religious holidays and ceremonies without feeling as though I am committing a massive faux pas? Isn’t it crazy that we have whole degree courses and careers dedicated to studying something demonstrably at odds with evidence? I digress.
As I have removed religious texts from my moral guidance I need to explain that there is no ultimate right or wrong, no ultimate moral authority. We, as a society, have decided over time what we consider to be acceptable behaviour and what is not. Originally these rules were derived from religion but they aren’t anymore. Laws change over time to reflect how society changes and what society [generally] accepts. Yes, there are always going to be people on the fringes of societal behaviour and beliefs and these people will make lots of noise but they can fuck off. Our judiciary makes the decisions and I am glad I live in a free country. I am NOT going to use the free speech argument because I honestly don’t think we have that in this country [UK], I am unsure that it is enshrined in law. It can’t be because an hate speech or aggressive tweets could land you in lots of trouble, we also have thought crime in the UK.
Whether you are religious or not you probably agree that killing someone is a BAD thing to do. It’s immoral. It’s against society. You may or may not extend that to the state killing by using the death penalty or going to war. I do think that war can be justified but I struggle with that very much. It is clear to me that we have a duty to give people freedom. My current thoughts are that “freedom” means a free and fair judiciary [thanks to JPW] and a liberal penal code, this may or may not occur within a democracy. For example: it is wrong to outlaw homosexuality, although legalisation was a recent thing in the UK. It is definitely very WRONG to have the death sentence for homosexuality. This paragraph could go further but I need to move on.
In what is generally called The West we are free to insult our politicians and other leaders. We can draw cartoons of them. We can write songs about them. We can make fun of them. For them it is considered part of the job [where is Spitting Image now?] This is freedom. It is our laws that allow us to do that. This should be a freedom everywhere. If you can’t do these things then I hope that one day you will be able to. You will have a long struggle ahead but we can all live in a world where we can rip into those in power.
We also make fun of religion. If my joke makes you question your religion then your religion isn’t up to much is it? If you can’t accept my joke, my valid point or the fact that your holy book was written many years after the events and from hearsay and is not really what happened then YOU have the problem. If the historical evidence doesn’t fit your religious narrative then the problem is yours. You are very welcome to insult me, my thoughts and beliefs and my ideals. I am still free to have those views.
If the image on the left is fine, but the image on the right offends you then I guess you have the right to be offended. However I have the right to produce this image. You need to get over it. Stop being outraged.
Killing 12 people because they belonged to an organisation that published some cartoons, some drawings proves that you are fucked up. You represent the worst of your religion. The worst of Islam and you do a disservice to all Muslims. While we must remember that 3 people killed 12 others today we should also remember that the vast majority of Muslims do not go around killing people because they hold different views and morals. They accept that, much like politicians, people will question them and what their holy book says.
It’s been quite a while since the major Christian faiths went around the world killing everyone and fucking things up quite a bit. But they did do it. And they did it in the name of religion. For a thousand years you could be killed or imprisoned for being the wrong religion in the “western” countries. But, we matured. We moved religion to the fringes and outside government. We now have religious and cultural freedom. Not yet in the USA though. There are MANY problems with the religious right and Christianity imposing crazy laws to oppress the rights we take for granted [and many Catholic countries too]. I am not claiming we are perfect. We aren’t, there’s still progress to be made. We spend more on dog food that we do on feeding the poor.
It appears these 12 murders were committed in the name of Islam. Islam needs to stand up to the fringes of its society and push-back, it should reform those fringes. Islam needs to shout as loud as possible that it is a reformed religion and extremism won’t be tolerated. It’s easy to take young men and radicalise them. It’s what young men are good at. In the West we have sport, PlayStation and music videos. We can distract many from the outliers of society, but we don’t always succeed. We still have people who do bad things. It’s what happens in any society. We try to minimise that though. We do this through freedom of the press, freedom of society, freedom of the judiciary.
I know this sounds all high and mighty. I can see that people would think I am shouting “aren’t I a good atheist and all the religions, especially Islam bad. Isn’t the West wonderful with its freedoms and Coca Cola”. Well, at the moment, most world wide terrorism is Islamic. It’s Islamic states that sponsor this terrorism. What country has the death penalty for atheism? Saudi Arabia (where women can’t drive too). I am not trying to hold the UK up as a beacon of excellence. We do plenty wrong, like invade a country illegally on dodgy evidence and then rationalise it post hoc. We have tortured. We have spied on our citizens. We have interned people with little evidence. We are not perfect. But we are at least trying to do the best we can. Also, if I want to question politicians I can. I can become a politician if I want. I can drink whenever I want I can eat what I want. I can believe in what I want. I don’t have to go to church. I am free to live my life how I want to.
We should not be surprised that murders like these things happen. What is abhorrent though is the reasoning behind these killings. Religion can be a good thing, I’m not sure it’s necessary, but it exists for now and so we should tolerate it when it is a force for good. Also people seem to take it so seriously. But we should NOT accept ANY reason or organisation that legitimises and encourages murder.
If you would like to read more cartoons that uses Jesus, Mohammed, Moses and a barmaid as its main characters then you should read JesusandMo.
“Here we stand.” Brilliant by @alexmassie on #jesuischarly http://t.co/AMIJUVYQMY
— Iain Martin (@iainmartin1) January 7, 2015
Here’s a cartoon:
All Part Of The Plan
“It was meant to be”
“It’s my destiny”
“Whatever will be will be”
What a load of shit. All of these sayings just lend credence to the idea of agency behind your life. The concept that someone or something is controlling YOUR life. The idea that the great zombie sky fairy is looking out for just you and not necessarily any of the other seven billion people on this planet.
The idea of agency is so built into us that it’s hard to get rid of it. It takes a lot of effort to give up thoughts of our destiny and the plan.
We are so enamoured with the concept of agency that we see it everywhere. Hollywood makes films constantly suggesting that there is a plan for us all, look at the messages and what you are told. There are bullshit books that tell us about the universe working for us, see The Secret or the bible or any other religious text referring to a sky-fairy.
Your life is mostly in your control, but you will regularly get fucked over by things outside of your sphere of influence; politicians, bankers and the economy and mostly just random events. There’s a great lie enforced all the time by the media suggesting that we can control the economy and that our politicians are able to tinker with the tax rates to build a stronger country. This is rubbish. The amount of the economy that the government has direct control over is not enough to impact our growth or economic health. We are pretty much at the mercy of such a complex system where there is no overall control that it is more comforting to think we can blame particular politicians. We feel uncomfortable with the idea of randomness and things just happening.
I might get started on agency and our belief in control with respect to the monarchy and society as a whole. How we give our trust to government and yet fail to understand the randomness of the world. But, I shall leave that to another communication.
You are the person who can change your life. There is no destiny. There is no great plan. However much you aim to control your own life you are still going to be subject to random events, things that are outside of your control. Other things are going to mess you up.
There is no plan.